Theoktistos believed that the Virgin
Mary had always existed and that she was not conceived through, from or during
physical intercourse. (G. Fatouros [ed.], Theodori Studitae epistulae,
CFHB Series Berolinensis [Berlin: Water de Gruyter, 1992], no. 490 II. 16-20) (Eirini Panou, “The Theological Substance of St. Anna’s
Motherhood in Byzantine Homilies and Art,” in The Reception of the Virgin in
Byzantium: Marian Narratives in Texts and Images, ed. Thomas Arentzen and
Mary B. Cunningham [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019], 65)